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agricultural land use Articles

The expansion of agricultural land use has been associated with the loss of environmental amenities, such as biological diversity, ecosystem services, and aesthetic values. Here, the determinants of agricultural land use are examined, drawing on panel data from 121 countries over the period 1965–1987. The analysis finds that an inverted U curve (or "environmental Kuznets curve") describes the ...

In Germany and other countries of Central Europe, biodiversity in the rural countryside is best conserved by applying traditional land-use methods, such as low input sheep and cattle grazing. These are very uneconomical according to conventional accounting and can only be carried out at present by benefitting heavily from the subsidy schemes of the CAP. Trade liberalisation demands the abolition ...

Most catchments discharging into the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) lagoon have elevated loads of suspended sediment, nutrients, and pesticides, including photosystem II inhibiting herbicides, associated with upstream agricultural land use. To investigate potential impacts of declining water quality on fish physiology, RNASeq was used to characterize and compare the hepatic transcriptomes of ...

Tropical agroecosystems are subject to degradation processes such as losses in soil carbon, nutrient depletion, and reduced water holding capacity that occur rapidly resulting in a reduction in soil fertility that can be difficult to reverse. In this research, a polyphasic methodology has been used to investigate changes in microbial community structure and function in a series of tropical soils ...

Agricultural development in Sub-Saharan Africa witnessed an initial period of growth in the few years after independence (1960s) and went into decline after the 1980s. This spurred many governments to embark on structural adjustment programmes that are only just showing the first signs of improvement. This raises some searching questions concerning the process of formulating and implementing ...

A number of policy tools are used to reduce soil erosion from agricultural lands in the USA, including education and technical assistance, financial assistance, land retirement, and conservation compliance requirements. Education and technical assistance by public and private sources can be effective in promoting the adoption of conservation tillage by farmers for whom that practice will be ...

In the United States, there has been a surge of interest in eating fresh local foods, corresponding with mounting concerns about the climate effects of consuming food from distant places and about the obesity and other health problems associated with junk food diets. This is reflected in the rise in urban gardening, school gardening, and farmers’ markets. With the fast-growing local foods ...

The drive to develop crops for use as biofuel, continues to raise questions about additional uses of forest land. A cutting edge computer model developed at North Carolina State University offers detailed insight to predict the environmental impact – along with understanding forest ecosystem response to global climate change. “We think the model will help policy makers and ...

Spatiotemporal distributions of water consumption for various land use-cover types over the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia were estimated using Surface Energy Balance Algorithm. Water consumption of various land use and cover classes shows similar seasonal dynamic trends. The spatial distribution of annual actual evapotranspiration (AET) shows low values in the Empty Quarter (231–438 mm/yr), ...

Water is an increasingly scarce and valuable resource. It is generally accepted that there is a finite supply of water. As economies grow there is an increasing demand for water. The application of water to agricultural lands for irrigation is one of the essential uses of this natural resource in many areas. There is competition among agriculture, industry, and human consumption for the ...

Changes in land cover in Europe reflect modifications in the uses of land, which often compete for the same resource: development of artificial surfaces for housing, transport and economic activities; intensification or extensification of agriculture practices; conversion of natural land to agriculture or farmland abandonment; afforestation or deforestation. Accounting for land cover change in a ...

Land and natural resources lie at the heart of social, political, and economic life in much of rural Africa. They represent fundamental assets—primary sources of livelihood, nutrition, income, wealth, and employment for African communities—and are a basis for security, status, social identity, and political relations. For many rural people, land and resources such as water, trees, and ...

As in many parts of the People’s Republic of China, Shanxi Province is experiencing reduced water security for the agriculture sector. Changing climate conditions, including reduced rainfall, are increasing reliance on groundwater resources in the province. Unsustainable groundwater use for food production intensifies the impacts of climate change, and cost-effective adaptation responses ...

This report was prepared by Rabobank in collaboration with the World Resources Institute. In many regions around the world, demand for fresh water now outstrips renewable supplies. Water scarcity is projected to worsen considerably due to a combination of factors such as population increase, higher incomes and changing lifestyles, pollution, and climate change. Agriculture is by far the biggest ...

The challenge for any trade agreement is to be adaptable enough to enable countries to address legitimate non-trade concerns (NTC) while being restrictive enough to limit harm to other countries and to assist the creation of free international markets. In this paper, we focus on how environmental NTC have been addressed in agricultural policy in the USA and the European Union (EU) and the ...

Wastewater from the food processing and food service industries can contain large quantities of fat, oil and grease (FOG). Most North American jurisdictions have bylaws limiting the concentration of oil and grease in sewer discharges. As municipal source control efforts become more aggressive, quantities of FOG waste requiring proper treatment/disposal will increase. At the same time access to ...

Durable food security and agricultural growth depend on development strategies with resilience built in from the start, says Gordon Conway. Economic growth with resilience to environmental threats will be central to the agenda of the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) in June this year, which aims to map out a pathway of sustainable development for the planet. ...

The Riverina region in south-western New South Wales, Australia, is a discrete geographical area having unique patterns of soils and vegetation. During 170 years, it has been used productively for sheep and cattle grazing, but with significant detrimental impact on the natural systems. This article reviews the historical impact and suggests means of rehabilitating the landscape for the purposes ...

The article presents findings of local experimentation for managing land degradation problems in swidden farming, and the institutional setting for such experimental activities within a resilience theory framework. By using action research (AR) methodology, which included in-depth interviews and joint field experiments, the research process facilitated collective learning related to land ...

On August 29, 2016, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) published a study on the result of land-use changes on North and South Dakota commercial honey bee colonies in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. USGS scientists found that grasslands and other landscape ...